Britten At Edinburgh

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31762, 20 August 1968, Page 9

Britten At Edinburgh

The Edinburgh Festival opened on Sunday with a special tribute to Britain’s leading contemporary composer, Benjamin Britten—but the rest of the three-week artistic feast will be as international as ever.

The nineteenth - century Austrian composer, Schubert, is sharing top place with Britten in the musical programme.

Their works will be played by the U.S.S.R. State Orchestra and the Bavarian Radio Orchestra, as well as by five British orchestras headed by the London Symphony Orchestra and the New Philharmonia.

Yehudi Menuhin played Britten’s Violin Concerto with the London Symphony Orchestra at the opening concert Mstislav Rostropovich will be the soloist when the U.S.S.R. State Orchestra, under Evgenij Svetalnov, performs Britten’s Cello Symphony later this week.

Britten himself is among the conductors at the festival with Pierre Boulez, Otto Klemperer, Claudio Abbado, Carlo Maria Giulini, and others. The soloists will include Daniel Barnboim, David Oistrakh, Sviatoslav Richter, Isaac Stem and Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau. A distinguished contribution from Western Germany will be a return visit of the Hamburg State Opera with two Strauss operas and Wagner’s “Der Fliegende Hollander.” A newcomer to Britain is Jerzy Grotowsky’s Laboratory Theatre, a celebrated Polish avant-garde company from Wrocklaw. The United States will be represented by the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre and the Trinity Square Repertory Company, from Rhode Island, which will be seen in “Year of the Locust,” a play by the British author, Norman Holland,

about Oscar Wilde in Reading Gaol. It has not been staged on this side of the Atlantic. Festival visitors also include the Abbey Theatre, from Dublin, with Synge’s “The Playboy of the Western World.” But the theatrical highlight is expected to be “Hamlet” with Tom Courtenay in the title role. This will be presented by the 69 Theatre Company, whose other contribution will be Ibsen's rarely-performed last play, “When We Dead Awaken.” One of several art exhibitions —entitled “Canada 101” and sponsored by the Canada Council—will be devoted to work by contemporary Canadian artists.

The film festival, which is part of the main festival, will celebrate the seventieth birthday of John Grierson, pioneer of the British documentary film, with an extensive retrospective programme.